LOW Watts | ROG vs Steam Deck

[@Trainer_Orange]

This was fantastic. Even though I was already aware that my Ally was not performing as good as my SD at 7-10W I am surprised by the fact that the breakeven point seems to be all the way up to 15W! Really wish Asus gave us more things to tinker with, disabling cores would be a first since the CPU is just waaaay overkill for most games, especially if you're aiming to run at 35-50 fps. Secondly we should be able to configure the power governer, on stock settings it starves the CPU too much, especially on lower wattages. Causing higher FPS, but more frequent stutters.

[@everythinggucci3692]

Very interesting video. Luckily I never play with that low of wattage. 15w is the G spot for the ally and with free sync on it just takes it to another level at 15w. Awesome video mate!

[@JhustineProvido]

18w is the gspot imo

[@everythinggucci3692]

@@JhustineProvido 18 is a solid wattage I agree.

[@redcrimson1028]

Yeah but the battery suffers, so it's kind of a bad trade off. My rog always reminds me that yo, you can only play your games for about an hour. I got 3hr 45mins on remnant 2 on deck

[@JustMikeBro]

@@redcrimson1028ally has nearly double the performance double the hz and considering it’s battery life is quite good imo especially me cause I would only have like one hour to spare to play

[@redcrimson1028]

@MikeCriticalOps at least that's the lie u tell yourself. Who games for an hour? With the comment that you made, you actually proved to me that your an idiot! U don't make any sense whatsoever. Do u know how many hours people put into games and you're talking about gaming for one hour is good? I bet you're one of those idiots who play your rog with the adapter plugged in after making that statement? Now let me end this by elaborating more on why your comment makes no sense. You said the rog is double the performance and hz. Well, there is a new handheld out that does better than what the rog does, and it has a 65-watt battery that enables you to play triple A games for 3 and half hours! I've seen side by side comparison with the Rog tapping out at an hour. Where the other device had 2 and a half hours left. I played remnant 2 on full battery on the rog and halfway thru the level it dropped to %10, and this is the handheld, u said is good for an hour of play time? You can't be serious! I'm pretty sure Asus would love to pat you on your back for saying that. It's people like you that gives these lazy companies that aren't competent in making an efficient product the reason to keep giving us undeveloped products.

[@12655rsohne]

Great work on these videos. I really appreciate your attention to detail and helping us understand our Ally's better.

[@thatgamergirlshon8049]

Another amazing video. The attention to detail and effort put into actually explaining what is happening with each device has been so helpful. Thanks for all of your hard work and I am looking forward to your future ROG Ally videos.

[@mrdrwdry]

Thanks for the info.very comprehensive. appreciate the side to side comparison.

[@prabudawaiswara7111]

I own a ROG ally but i really adore the magic of the steam deck at low wattage. For an indie game it’s just so much better. Really hope that Asus can improve the low wattage performance because of the new bios 323 that improve the performance of 15 watts tdp (still i doubt that it can even match steam).

[@filt3rless]

This is on the new bios 323 :). The Steam Deck is just unreal at low wattage. I didn't think these were the results I would find when I started testing. I thought it'd be a lot closer, but at low watts it's a pretty big difference.

[@redcrimson1028]

Yeah true, I'm with you on that. The steam deck and it's proton os was built with efficiency in mind from the jump. Asus should've taken notes. They went straight for raw power over efficiency, bad move. They just wanted to win people over with flashy graphics. Some games also work better on the steam deck vs the rog.

[@dienekesn9312]

This is true I play the original dead space trilogy at 5w 40 fps stable. You can even go as low as 3w if you want

[@filt3rless]

@@dienekesn9312 I was playing Dirt Rally 2.0 on the Steam Deck and saw 1W for the CPU and around 2.5W for the GPU at 40FPS. I don't even understand how Valve got the chip to perform that well at such low watts. I remember the older light bulbs used to be 60W, just to have a light on 🤣. Makes me wonder how different things will be, even in just the next 10 years or so.

[@prabudawaiswara7111]

@@filt3rless Damnn Gabe Newell must’ve use some sort of wizardry😂

[@nxjz]

Great Work! Thank you! I've noticed on my Ally and on your video, that GPU will hardly get over 800Mhz if using

[@genio5311]

In a lot of games Deck is superior even at 15W, that's not acceptable for a device i paid double the Deck price here in Europe, which has Zen4/RDNA3 at 4nm vs Zen 2/RDNA2 at 7nm. Asus and AMD have to work quick and address this situation okay going up in TDP Ally goes ahead but then battery will take a huge hit since they went with the same 40Wh battery that Deck uses. Also we have a 1080p display which looks bad at 720p, worse than Deck at its native 800p resolution, so we have to often use 1080p with FSR, which requires more power than just 800p native like Deck can do

[@andrewcoetzee8858]

You don't know what you're talking about. You double your performance at 30 watts.... no CPU can be amazing across the board its either better at higher wattage or better at lower wattage. You can't have the best of both worlds. The APU is built to run better at higher wattages. Get an education

[@filt3rless]

Hey, this was more a fun comparison to see the difference since BIOS 323 helped improve lower wattage performance. The Ally is still a beast at higher wattages and that's what it's built for. 15W is full power on the Steam Deck, but only half on the Ally. For a full power comparison it'd need to be 15W vs 30W and the difference is VERY noticeable (so is the battery life 🤣). It's like having a sports car though, it won't get the same MPG as a Honda Civic no matter if you're driving slow or fast.. The Ally screen also has Freesync which is amazing, allowing the frames to move around and be almost unnoticeable.

[@TheGamingPedro]

Another interesting to see is are the temps of the ally at 25C lower than the steam deck

[@jedvaulten02]

Don't forget deck using regular paste lmaoo it will turn to water within a week

[@uuuuu7307]

@@jedvaulten02 what are you smoking

[@jedvaulten02]

@@uuuuu7307 your dad's ashes

[@jedvaulten02]

@@uuuuu7307 I own an Ally lmao brokie, deck sucks so much 😂

[@uuuuu7307]

@@jedvaulten02 i have nothing against ally and deck, but your statement that deck will turn to water within a week is ridiculous. So what are you smoking??

[@ramihaidafy]

Thanks for taking the time to put this together. As usual, very informative content. Your videos convinced me to buy an Ally and I have no regrets.

[@filt3rless]

Thanks! Glad you like it, I love mine!

[@7error8lade]

It appears that the GPU is getting more love from the Ally. ASUS need to bump up the wattage for CPU for low wattage so that it can compete with the Steam Deck. From the video, the CPU rarely even hit 20% usage on the Ally while Steam Deck pretty much stay above 70%. EDIT: Btw, is the Ally tested with CPU boost on? Was wondering if that could be a factor for low wattage performance.

[@filt3rless]

Yes CPU boost is on. I think the biggest factor is the CPU in the Ally is an absolute beats (scoring about 8,500+ in TimeSpy). The Steam deck scores around 3,500. Half the wattage of the Steam Decks total would be 7W, and half the total of the ally is 15W. It's just the steam deck was custom built to be REALLY good at low wattages. I was surprised myself by the results and didn't think there would be such a big difference. However, once you crank the wattage up, the Ally is like a sports car and just blows the steam deck away.

[@filt3rless]

Shout out to the new members of the channel: EverythingGucci, Alexandre De Guise & JoeyVR. If you'd like to help support the channel, consider becoming a member here: kzbin.info/door/TUwicX_v26e1dSv08FX8ZQjoin As always, timestamps are in the description, enjoy! :)

[@0001am]

I only play at 1080p on the ally but great video.

[@TheUAProdigy]

So you use more power than is used in the video. How is your battery life?

[@Impostor39890]

Lovely, I always wonder how Fable and other old games will do at low wattage on these devices, didn't expect the difference to be this massive.

[@mariusjucan]

Awesome work, we need more like this :D

[@StaleCookies]

I’m curious how they match up when you park 4 of the Ally’s 8 cpu cores.

[@jinx20001]

Asus really need to expand the tools armoury crate provides because thats just the kind of thing crate needs so the user can squeeze everything out of it.

[@Drivenby]

If its anything to go by all the other PC handheld that have this future… not much difference except worst performance

[@ALmaN11223344]

The Steam Deck lies pretty hard about its usage, it'd be interesting to see how much the Ally lies about its usage. When set to 5w TDP the deck actually uses around 7-8w typically at the APU.

[@arcticowl1091]

both devices only report the APU wattage in those graphs, it's not a lie, the program just doesn't monitor everything else that also uses power.

[@win8win77]

The temp says a lot.. Steam Deck utilizing nearly 100% of gpu , when Ally's gpu more powerful and more consuming even at 65%

[@Muhluri]

Nice comparison! Please do another one with the updated Ally Bios vs steam deck OLED

[@filt3rless]

Thanks! I'll have to wait until Valve fixes the TDP issues with Steam OS 3.5. For some reason around the 6-10 watt range there is major stuttering across a ton of games. So if you have a Steam Deck on 3.5 or later, I'd recommend using an FPS cap instead of a TDP limit until they fix it. I made a video about the issue here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fKPHZ2Wmj86ceMU

[@potatoMethod]

nice work although i would suggest that you name each side and not just mention it at the start that will help for people that ignored the start of the video. additionally, it would be great if you did this exact same thing with emulators (ps2-gc-wii-ps3-switch light games- switch hard games like tears or the xeno games) as this handhelds for sure are going to be used for that as well.

[@kusumayogi7956]

You must show steam deck cpu and gpu clockspeed too

[@hiroosama]

These videos should have simpler titles to make them easier to find, I'm sure they would get a lot more views. I tried to find YOUR video because this is exactly what i wanted to watch, but I was searching for terms like "low energy consumption tests". Who knew that i will find it with comparison against Ally? 100% like anyway

[@agreatflood2121]

Do you think you'd be willing to test out games like God of War 2018, Fortnite with Nanite & Lumen, and Spider-Man Remastered at 7 watts? I'm asking partly because I'm curious what the Switch 2 will be able to do and the rumors suggest it'll be 5W. You give the best insights so far regarding what can expect from a new Nintendo console!

[@justinhewson616]

I have noticed with my ally it has pretty bad 720 performance vs 1080p on it. Will keep my steam deck for the lower graphic games though

[@crestofhonor2349]

Can you do a battery life test comparing similar wattages on the ROG Ally vs the Steam Deck?

[@filt3rless]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I think that would be a fun test. I was planning to do a FPS comparison on battery. Basically setting each system to a certain FPS and seeing how many watts they draw to achieve that FPS. The Steam Deck will definitely win at lower wattages though. It handles sub 15 watts very well, where as the ROG Ally doesn't like lower watts as much. However, I definitely prefer the ROG Ally to the steam deck.

[@crestofhonor2349]

@@filt3rless The reason why is because I've been torn between getting the Steam Deck and ROG Ally plus battery life is somwhat important to me. I don't really ever plan on using more than 15w on battery if I had the Ally. I don't even mind dealing with windows as I'm used to it

[@filt3rless]

@@crestofhonor2349 What kind of games are you planning on playing? I think that will matter more between choosing. On the Steam Deck if you're planning on playing any multiplayer games, last time I checked Anti-Cheat didn't work. So a bunch of online multiplayer games didn't work properly. And if you want to play something like Diablo 4, you'll have to do work arounds to get Battlenet working. It's really hard to choose which one and definitely depends on what you like. The steam deck has top class support and is more reliable (at least from what I've seen). However, I personally can't even play the Steam Deck anymore because I got tired of having to find work arounds to play stuff. Now I'm on the Ally with windows and I can just install games. But something the Steam Deck does that you can't do on the Ally is quick resume. So you can just hit the power button mid game on the steam deck and turn it into a sleep state. Then press it again and it resumes. I wish I could tell you which one to get. I'd watch other KZbinr videos that have done in-depth comparisons to see more about the Pro's / Con's and make the best decision for you :)

[@crestofhonor2349]

@@filt3rless I have a bunch of games across stores like EA, Steam, GOG, and Epic Games. I also like emulation, jRPGs, racing games, and others. I don't play a ton of online only games but I do play some games outside of stores online

[@filt3rless]

@@crestofhonor2349 I think it'd be a lot easier to install those launchers and run the games you want on the Ally. If you just had steam games, then I could see the Steam Deck working. I don't want to say "get this" or "get that" though as you really would want to watch videos and weigh the pro's/con's. If the ROG Ally was made by steam, and I knew steam was backing it, I'd instantly say get the ROG Ally. But steam support is awesome, Asus not so much. And that's why I'm hesitant to recommend the ROG Ally. I'm on my 3rd device.... First one SD Card Reader failed (which seems to happen a lot). Second ROG Ally had a USB-C port issue. My 3rd unit had the left speaker fading, and I ended up having to re-seat the cable and put a piece of tape under it to make it more secure. If you have a BestBuy near you, I'd buy it there and try it out, then you can easily return in within 14-days if you don't like it.

[@oxygen026]

I’ve been using Steamdeck LCD for around 3 months. I have been amazed by how much you can get from so little. My goal with every game is now to run it at the lowest possible wattage. I’ve been playing Hogwarts Legacy at 10W or Cyberpunk at 11 W (30 fps capped of course). Honestly, even 15 W does not ensure smooth 40 fps so there is no point to go higher. Rog Ally was a bit of a disappointment. Lower wattage performance is much worse than the Steamdeck’s - 15 W is really a starting point for the newer games. It can go higher, but anything more than 15 W means basically no battery life. And I just think that that is the point where the main attributes of a „portable handheld gaming machine” disappear. It might be more future proof, but at a cost of being constantly wired. Rog Ally with 60 Wh battery would be pretty sick. I can definitely see myself taking an advantage of Windows. I think I am gonna stick to Steamdeck though.

[@filt3rless]

The steam decks are amazing. I got the OLED a while back and it's beyond impressive how little watts it uses. One thing I noticed as well is you can just set an FPS cap and the Steam OS will lower the TDP automatically. I compared manually setting TDP and just setting and FPS cap and found the FPS works better most of the time. It'll spike up when it needs it, but then bring it back down when it doesn't, and the game will run smoother.

[@jc74435]

Great video as always 🙏

[@3ehut4uk]

Nice video, as usual. Not a good look for ASUS/AMD though. Generations ahead of SD hardware and yet same performance at 15W (and worse lower). Really hope drivers will unlock the full potential of this thing and I hope we don’t have to wait a year for it to happen.

[@ferociouzmonk]

After bios 323 mine kinda bricked. Windows kept freezing and wad unresponsive took 5 minutes to launch armory crate which didn't work when it launched. The quick panel just died. Had to return mine.

[@filt3rless]

Dang sorry to hear that. Are you planning on getting another one?

[@ferociouzmonk]

@@filt3rless not yet. I'm gonna wait until they ironed everything out a bit more. When it was working it was flawless red dead on ultra with almost 50fps. And wow classic on the go whenever and wherever was amazing having quest 2 wireless and portable pc vr was goat. But I think it's still in a testing phase :) but it's definitely something the future holds in handheld pc

[@MrMilkyCoco]

I would love for the rog ally to be better at 15w at least. I hope asus/amd will optimize the apu but I have to temper my expectations I feel like low wattage was a afterthought with the rog. I chose to get the ally due to it being windows but honestly if the steamdeck came out with a 120hz/vrr/freesync screen i wouldve went for that. I definitely will upgrade my rog to the steam deck 2 if they make one.

[@filt3rless]

Same, however the freesync on the ROG Ally I think is underrated when compared to the Steam Deck. It makes all the difference. So even though the FPS aren't as good in some games at 15W, the experience is better IMO.

[@akmalamni]

Asus and AMD really needs to work on that dedicated driver update, it’s still not available for the Z1E

[@zachattwood523]

I do wonder with the old DX9 games if you run them with dxvk on rog ally if you would get large jumps as I have had luck in past on games like Tera on windows.

[@prezthebutton8876]

Would be interesting to see this test performed with Ally running a copy of steamos 3.0 that way we could rule out operating system overhead.

[@filt3rless]

I'd like that too. I tried Chimera OS but there was no way to limit TDP. When Steam OS comes out (or a modded version that works), I'll definitely be giving it a try :)

[@reeeformat3843]

I can imagine the amount of work you put into this video, amazing info thanks for this! the steamdeck is truly designed for older AAA games and mainly AA and indie games I'd say to get the best out of the system. While the ally aims more to run the more modern titles at better performance

[@banboosy]

Great vid. Not sure if you’d be interested in a “useable fps” benchmark. That is, if I’m going for efficiency obviously I’m not interested in 150 fps. Im looking for 40 or 60, so I’d be interested in how many watts the Ally would need to match the Deck on a stable 40 or 60 fps. You can kind of see this already from your testing that it’s about 3w.

[@filt3rless]

I am definitely interested in that. I have a video on watts and the best wattage to use across a bunch of games here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/kJ-0hqh9lKiGq8U. However, it is on the older bios 322, this was run on bios 323 which improves low wattage performance a lot. Which is why I was surprised myself to see such a gap.

[@jinx20001]

its pretty clear Asus have some work to do to get low wattage optimization, it may never come because like you said that APU just seems to need more juice, but thats a solid advantage for the deck, its very important these devices perform well at low wattage because these things shine in lighter games... heres the thing though, it wont matter if the deck blasts out 120fps vs 80fps on the ally because you will never see 120fps on the deck but you will see the 80fps on ally and with VRR its silk.

[@smidlee7747]

The deck apu is custom designed to run at low wattage while the other PC handhelds are using a general purpose laptop apu designed to run 15-30 tdp. A custom chip is more expensive which is why only the Deck has a custom chip while these other PC handheld cut cost by using an apu designed for laptops.

[@filt3rless]

Freesync is 👌. If the Steam Deck had freesync the Ally would have been harder to justify. I've noticed though that most handhelds coming out only have 60Hz displays. And while they could be "good", the 120Hz Freesync is just in another class. Another interesting thing is half the max APU wattage on the Steam Deck is 7W, half for the Ally is 15W. So it's not really a "fair" comparison, I was more just curious to see what the results would be and wanted to share them :)

[@jinx20001]

@@filt3rless yeh I hear ya, that’s true. Look forward to the next one mate.

[@ThePsychoghost]

I think for doom not letting benchmark apps to show up is because of the vulkan api. I could be wrong it could be something else

[@liviutatarush1249]

The last of us, Jedi survivor, any UE 5 engine? I'm curious how it behaves with what games come out from now on! The old ones are working well, as you can see, but how will SD do in the future?

[@filt3rless]

I suspect as titles get more and more demanding, the Ally will really shine. It'd be awesome if we could get a device that had superb lower wattage performance as well as good high watt performance. It's almost like having a 1,000HP car and wanting good gas mileage though. I do plan to test newer games soon :)

[@EduardoVasquezMedina]

What bios what used for the Ally? the latest 323 bios had a significant increased in performance at 15w. Even so 25w is rather pointless now.

[@filt3rless]

I'm using 323 (which is why I ran the test). I also made a video about the performance improvements on 323 at 15W, 18W & 30W here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/amPKqHawos2Xfdk

[@ominousview]

I wonder if a genuine 7840u would be better at low wattage. What did Asus do to "optimize" the 7840u. I've seen one review where the Ayaneo 2s outperformed the Ally. .be interesting to see how the onexFly compares to it as well

[@filt3rless]

I doubt a normal 7840u would do much better. The chip seems to be design in the higher watt range. Which makes sense for the device/performance we're seeing. It'll be really interesting seeing all the new handhelds that come out. I think the main thing that's great is we have numerous options and that will probably expand to even more as time goes on :)

[@X862go]

i've noticed i get better fps at 1080p than 720 on the rog ally? might be something with native v sync?

[@filt3rless]

I haven't tested this. At lower wattages though (where the CPU is the bottleneck) it could be very close in FPS.

[@Zer01neBDTDev]

Hope people will see the issue here, Ally APU is barely used at Low Wattage, both CPU and GPU are sleeping.

[@filt3rless]

100%, this test was run just for fun to see how the new Bios 323 compared in the lower wattage range. As soon as the Ally is given the watts it needs, it wakes up 💪

[@gangwu4541]

Wait for AMD drivers. Ally’s apu is not fully utilized.

[@nikolaikai940]

Is there any ETA on them?

[@filt3rless]

I'm looking forward to testing the new drivers out. I have a LOT of games I've tested and ready to do a comparison when it drops :)

[@zzzzzap]

that won't change a lot anyway. And by the way also steam os and proton will get performance updates.

[@mdubbau]

Hey @filterless how did you get the Real-time Monitor to show additional metrics e.g. VRAM usage and frametime graph?

[@filt3rless]

It's a program called MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner. I don't have any tutorials on them, but there are lot on KZbin for how to install/set it up. It's completely separate from Asus' Monitor, even though I set them up so it looks close.

[@mdubbau]

@@filt3rless ahh that's it!! Thanks

[@miketauz1467]

When someone asks me why the steam deck is the best portable console:

[@AllyPal]

This is interesting. I've noticed in a few other KZbin videos that at the same APU wattage, the overall battery drain can be significantly different between the two devices. Curious if you've noticed that on yours?

[@filt3rless]

I have seen some strange findings where I'll raise the APU watt by 1, and the system is drawing 3-4 more watts. I just tested Skyrim though and with the Steam Deck and Ally both hovering around 42FPS, the SD was using 15.5 watts vs the Ally using 17W, so not a huge difference. It's going to depend on the game for sure. And the Ally really likes the extra watts (20ish range).

[@AllyPal]

@@filt3rless experimenting with ultra low wattage on 2d games today. In one game it was going up 2w just by turning on asus' monitor. Most I tested were around 0.2-0.35w which is still very significant when you're only drawing 6-7.5w total 😬. I guess the worst one got pushed over a threshold

[@filt3rless]

@@AllyPal Wow that is definitely ultra low. Do you also have a Steam Deck? If you've tested it on that as well I'd be super interested to hear the results you come up with at such low wattages.

[@BigDaddyMacc]

Lets do this test again in a year

[@filt3rless]

Definitely will be doing that :) And when the Steam Deck 2 and the ROG Ally 2 (hopefully) comes out eventually. I haven't had much interesting in all the other handhelds that seem to release a new unit every week 🤣

[@creaturecore13]

TY for this. I mainly play my deck at 10w and under. Saved me a bunch of money

[@filt3rless]

Np, it's an awesome machine at lower wattages. I don't think anything is going to hit the market that competes where the Steam Deck is competing anytime soon. The Ally does get really good FPS at higher watts though, but you loose a lot of battery life.

[@SushiPlaysFPS]

can u do a steam deck windows and rog ally vs video, maybe its a os thing other then hardware

[@lasthopelost9090]

I think it’s a combo of things to many cores for low wattage on top of windows being bloated I’m trying to find out if tiny 11 and less cores would make a difference

[@razeraelenetho7017]

I wonder how Valve managed to do this. The most inportant metric I see here is in fact gpu utilization. This means that cpu does just enough to keep gpu busy at the max and nothing more. The system seems to also prioritize pgu overall power wise because its much more important to keep gpu busy in a game overall. I wonder whther Ally itself (maning motherboard and other components) draw too much power and maybe new Ryzen soc is very power hungry?

[@razeraelenetho7017]

Ally's GPU running at 800hz here isn't a bottleneck because even at those clocks it is still only 40% utilized. The whole system seems to be choking until around 13 watts. Curious

[@razeraelenetho7017]

Fable is a good example: looking at Ally and going from 8 to 13 watts CPU freqs more than doubled (!) but GPU utilization only went up 20%. This is obviously a really bad power distribution. Steam Deck is amazingly optimized.

[@razeraelenetho7017]

10%*, not 20%. My bad.

[@filt3rless]

Hey, it's because Valve custom designed their own chip to be good at extremely low power. It's unbelievable how good it is at low watts. Since the ROG Ally is basically using the 7840u, there is only so little power it can draw since it's a laptop chip. It's like a high horsepower car, it'll suck down gas even at idle pretty quick, but it can perform well. The steam deck is like a smart car, not crazy powerful, but gets amazing mileage. In the future we might see new AMD chips that are built for low power since handhelds are getting more popular. The CPU in the Ally is extremely power hungry though from what I've seen. And that's the same thing with my laptop, the AMD chip likes to draw way more watts than is needed.

[@saidevpappu]

Well, done. It's a great video. You better test again with both devices steamdeck and rog ally with steam os(bazzite os) and test again. it will be a fairness test>

[@veridiux]

Was this done with the new bios on the ally? Also, was this done docked?

[@filt3rless]

This is done on the new BIOS 323 (which is the reason I ran it, I wanted to see myself :) and both connected to a Dock.

[@pkilljoy5797]

I presume this will change a lot in the future as asus modifies things. They already made good progress from 15-20w. But with that said, freesync is a game changer on a handheld with limited power budget. It almost always feels jarring when the steam deck loses frames. Not on ally!

[@filt3rless]

Hey, I'm not sure we'll see too much more power savings from the chip. Although I hope we do get a bit more. Valve had a custom SOC built specifically for lower wattage, where as Asus is using pretty much generic AMD 7840U laptop GPU, just labeled as "Z1 Extreme" to sound better. I agree with you 100% on the Steam Deck loosing a locked frame rate, VERY noticeable to me and I prefer the Freesync experience 1000%. You know, if the Steam Deck had a freesync display, it'd be almost perfect. The awesome thing is, handhelds are just getting rolling. As tech increases we'll eventually have 4090 TI's in our pocket (although that might be a while 🤣).

[@redcrimson1028]

I went back to playing my steam deck yesterday and realize how much more battery efficient it is over the rog. I was playing remnant 2 on low on steam deck @30fps and I got 3hrs and 45 mins smh what a shame. It didn't look great and runs sloppy at 39-40fps, it wasn't a smith experience. On the Rog though, the game looked beautiful and way beget then it did on the deck but, I only had 45 mins mabye an hour of I had kept playing and worst of all, it crashes on the Rog. It's unplayable on the rog. So the steam deck is still a beast. If you're going for line battery life I would go with the Deck. The deck is also design to run triple A games at lower watts which is great.

[@filt3rless]

Same, when I ran games on the Steam Deck I couldn't believe how low I could cap the wattage. Getting around 3+ hours in Subnautica at decent setting/FPS. But, the Ally is my go to console just for the sheere performance and not needing to cap FPS. The Freesync is 👌

[@redcrimson1028]

@@filt3rless same here

[@rainerbruning7268]

Could you also Test some newer Games? :) Like Hogwarts, Remnant 2 etc. . Could you maybe also Show 18W for Rog Ally and how Big is the Performance JUMP of the Ally.

[@filt3rless]

I do plan to test newer games soon. I'm trying to work out a fun way to present the information on a game visually so it helps everyone figure out the settings they'll like best.

[@rainerbruning7268]

@@filt3rless That Sounds great :) Your Channel IS actually my daily Prime Time :D

[@filt3rless]

@@rainerbruning7268 Thanks, glad you enjoy watching! :)

[@Arestryl]

And I wanted to pay double to buy the rog ally instead of the steam deck. Thanks for this video, now I have decided against it. In my country the rog ally is double the price of the steam deck lol

[@filt3rless]

This is only going to 15 watts so it's not exactly a "fair" comparison. The steam deck max APU is 15W, the ROG Ally is 30W. When you start upping the wattage, the ROG will eat the steam deck. However both are great devices, if you value battery life the Steam Deck is amazing. If you want freesync and ultimate performance (as well as being able to use gamepass, and any launcher/game on windows), the ROG Ally is the way to go. I have both and personally stopped using my SD 7 months ago or so, but the Ally is something I love using.

[@MrJustek]

Pretty sure the vrr on the rog ally is 48fps minimum. below that it doesn't look so good v.v there's software to turn it down lower, but it's a bit unstable...

[@MicaelAzevedo]

Its from 1hz ro 120hz. But you need to create a custom res for it to works.

[@SixPathsOfJin]

The VRR range is 40 - 120 on the Ally but it also supports low framerate compensation which means the actual range is even wider than that and gaming is effectively stutter/judder free.

[@MrJustek]

@@SixPathsOfJin o.o google says 48-120.....i've messed with my vrr on my rog ally, it was 48 minimum by default....

[@SixPathsOfJin]

@@MrJustek OK but it has LFC so that number doesn't really matter. The output will be judder free even at framerates far below 40fps.

[@MrJustek]

@@SixPathsOfJin yeah true. although i still wouldn't recommend going below 48fps in most games. It still just feels and looks kinda bad. while 48fps legit feels and looks like 60, i love it

[@genshin.sonata]

Kinda weird, seeing rog ally at low watt is losing from steam deck, but at normal watt (15 watt) it has more advantages

[@smidlee7747]

The Deck has a custom apu to run at lower tdp while all the other PC handhelds are using a laptop apu which is designed to run 15-30 tdp in order to cut cost. It's no more weird for a Honda Civic to get better gas mileage than a F150 truck.

[@filt3rless]

@@smidlee7747 Perfect comparison, although the Ally is more like a 1,000HP sports car, as once we hit the gas it's going to blow past the Steam Deck haha.

[@MisterPikol]

yeah I'll wait for a next gen steam deck

[@kyokushin2229]

Finally, so tired of people maxing out the watt for no performance gains and just heat gains, anything over 20w on the ally is pure temperature gain

[@heshotheman7991]

Can you please explain to me how is that even possible althought rog ally have higher specs

[@TheDarKris]

The short version is optimization

[@MFMArt]

The likely case is because the ally has twice the cores. Even though not all cores are fully utilized the device needs to spread the power delivery making it less efficient at lower watts. Asus said they are adding a feature to disable cores soon, so if my thoughts on it are correct you might see large performance increases at low watts when we get access to that

[@heshotheman7991]

@@MFMArt lets hope so thank you for this now i understand

[@nikolaikai940]

Instead of using an off-the-shelf CPU/GPU chip (APU) Valve actually co-designed the APU in the Steam Deck together with AMD and as others have said, they optimized the hell out of that thing for lower watt ranges while the Windows handhelds basically just took the fastest commercially available APU they could find and said fuck it, let that thing guzzle watts, we gotta go fast! Highly simplified of course since Asus for example is actively optimizing watt vs. performance through BIOS updates as best as they can after the fact, but you get the general idea.

[@AdanJJr2]

Do you guys think the ally might be able to run more efficient at lower wattage if we disable a few cores?

[@filt3rless]

Possibly, there is supposed to be an update coming out. I suspect though it'll just be better for things that are using 1-4 cores to disable it over any real watt savings.

[@niter43]

​@@filt3rless just in case -- you can make cores permanently parked (effectively disabled) with Windows power plan. CPMaxCores is the option.

[@cjswhitebo1882]

Gpu usage so low on the ally cuz you needa crank the graphics. My guess is the graphics were set way too low for the thing to acknowledge it needed more juice

[@filt3rless]

It primarily just needed more juice. The Ally can run at 30W vs the 15W on the Steam Deck. So it's not a fair comparison, but I wanted to see with the new BIOS 323 just how they stacked up at that lower wattage :)

[@manvindarsingh]

@@filt3rless I was wondering how would SD perform if people would find a way to crank up wattage on steamdeck over 15, also I am a bit disappointed after letting my SD go for ally, they need some serious scheduler updates or I was wondering how would performance will in chimeraos, can you test that for 2-3 games at low wattages

[@filt3rless]

@@manvindarsingh I am planning on doing Chimera OS, however, last time I installed it the Audio wasn't working and it wasn't in a playable state. I'm waiting for a release to come out where people could actually use it.

[@Drivenby]

The steam is wiping the floor… this is painful to watch

[@jeffreyali1456]

On 10w or lower yes, 15w and higher, Ally kills it and that’s before having even more new updates and the feature to disable cores to make it better so don’t get ahead of yourself there

[@nicerhabara]

@@jeffreyali1456 Well it depends, if one wants an actual handheld with somewhat decent battery life the SD absolutely destroys the Ally. If one doesn't care about battery life than the Ally absolutely destroys the SD It just depends on the use case

[@filt3rless]

At 15W which is the Steam Decks max APU watts. The Ally's max APU watts is 30W. So if we ran both at 100%, the results would be a LOT different. This was just a fun tests I ran to see on those lower wattages how they compared. The steam deck definitely wins *at lower watts.

[@Drivenby]

@@filt3rless don't disagree on anything you have said. But for me battery is very important and I play a lot of indie games. I have both the deck and the ally but unfortunately cannot get rid of the deck since the deck is just an indie monster. I play a lot on battery and the ally can't handle them as well with low tdp as the deck can.

[@zzzzzap]

@@jeffreyali1456 But then the ally looses in battery life: ;-D

[@TRX25EX]

This test is made for Ally non Extreme variant, it's better at those wattage than Steam Deck is, about 9-15W it's faster, Steam Deck still better at very low Wattage like 5-6W which anyway are unplayable

[@robblack8754]

Feels like the Deck is held back a bit from its potential at higher watts for it given how little gain there seems to be after about 10 or 11 watts while the Ally is being limited or very inefficient for lower watts. Would be nice if Asus can tweak things to make that lower power performance be better than it is.

[@andrewcoetzee8858]

Its far more complicated that you can imagine it seems. For the CPU to be as powerful in AAA games as it is it has to sacrifice lower TDP performance. No CPU can be amazing across the board its either better lower or better higher. They can make improvements but it will not be how you expect.

[@smidlee7747]

The reason all other PC handhelds uses a laptop apu is to cut cost. Valve had to pay extra for a custom chip in the Deck. This is one reason why Valve isn't interested in releasing a Deck 2 anytime soon.

[@filt3rless]

@@smidlee7747 I agree, I don't think ANYTHING is going to be touching the Steam Deck in it's extremely efficient use of watts. So people who like to play older titles (and even newer ones at lower FPS), while also getting good battery life, definitely benefit from the Steam Deck.

[@volcalstone]

Luckily I didn't see this prior to getting my Ally at launch. 😅 I didn't know that the SD was this good. Too bad it's a giant of a device. I don't have a huge Steam library tho as I mainly play games within Windows. I wonder if that Z1 non-extreme version is the power saving chip instead?

[@filt3rless]

This is low wattage though. And one thing that's important is the freesync display on the Ally. It allows the framerate to move around and still feel great. On the SD if you are not locked to an exact FPS it's pretty jarring. My SD sat for about 7 months untouched, then the Ally came out and I've used the Ally every day, so enjoy the device :). Around 20 watts is a great sweet spot on the Ally, you'll get awesome performance and decent temps.

[@rahul875]

Hybrid processor needed AMD should make it for Handhelds

[@Pravinvaithi]

Pls don’t use steam deck and rog ally with charger kindly remove the charger and test

Steam deck is amazing. I suppose Linux is a big reason for this.

[@nikolaikai940]

220 clips, jesus

[@SixPathsOfJin]

ROG Ally desperately needs some driver updates

[@smidlee7747]

Ally like all other PC handhelds cut cost by using a laptop apu designed to run 15-30 tdp while Valve had to pay extra to get a custom chip to run games at lower tdp. There is only so much Asus can do on the software side.

[@SixPathsOfJin]

@@smidlee7747 Agreed. I wouldn't say this is on ASUS, it's on AMD to provide better graphics drivers to improve on these issues. The APU just needs better instructions and AMD should put some effort in here since improvements here would also positively impact laptop performance too.

[@filt3rless]

@@smidlee7747 Dude you are a beast! I've come across your comments multiple times and you have awesome answers :)

[@MrMilkyCoco]

@@SixPathsOfJinProblem is amd most likely focuses on their bigger money makers first. The apus in the consoles and their more powerful dedicated laptop cpus and gpus.

[@pixelpatch]

Wait, how do you set your system to different wattages?

[@filt3rless]

You can do it inside Armoury Crate under "Settings" and then "Manual" mode. I have a guide on manual power levels here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hH_cZoGhrJ6id9k

[@heatlesssun]

Can you try a game new game? Say Rachet & Clank?

[@plaka61]

asus should see this video

[@smidlee7747]

There is only so much they can do since the Ally has a laptop apu designed to run 15-30 tdp while the deck has a custom chip designed to run at lower tdp which cost Valve more.

[@Torobuck]

Nah still sticking with the ally, the steam deck is still obsolete

[@user-sz6hk1nv3o]

The work that valve put in the steamdeck is unreal afyer all this updates can you imagen if both devices had the same part. Steamdeck will blow the rog out of the water.